Vera (26 page)

Neither Mirka nor Werunia is as promiscuous as you like to imagine, Robert. Both of us discriminate, Mirka a little less than me. Okay, a lot less. And there are no spectaculars – threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, that kind of giddy nonsense. There are quite a few invitations to romp around naked in a room full of naked people – but no.

I'll give you an example, and oh, this will please you, Robert – another famous person. We're having lunch at Tolarno – Robert Hughes, Mirka and I, and Kate Baillieu, who's my friend and a well-known journalist.

One of Bob's books has just come out. Maybe
The Fatal Shore
, do you think? The one about the convicts in their concentration camps, at a time when Deutschland was an idea buzzing about in the brainbox of Frederick II or one of those other Teuton maniacs. Forced labour, floggings, starvation rations – so much there to thrill Himmler in his research on the Final Solution, I'm sure. Anyway, Bob is pissed when we meet him, and if possible even more pissed after an hour at table. Not a shy man, Bob. Like most of the other Australian expatriates who made themselves famous offshore, he was a monster of ego redeemed by talent. Bob embraced the diners he was sharing a table with in the way that a performer wraps his arms around an audience. He has a thousand things to say about almost everything: art in New York and London and Australia, women, books; about Alan Moorehead, the Australian journalist and author, whom he admired; much more about women, food and wine; the British mindset in the eighteenth century.

He flirts with Kate, with me, with Mirka. He says we must go to bed, the four of us – this should happen immediately back at his hotel.

I say. ‘No, are you mad? No.'

Kate says, ‘Bob, no.'

Mirka says, ‘I am not sixteen.'

It's not a problem for Bob. If it's not me and Mirka and Kate, it will be three other women. He moves on to another subject without missing a beat. He's witty, he's amusing, and that is all the satisfaction I require for the time being. And all Mirka requires. She looks at me; I look at her. Our unspoken comment, each to the other, is an amused: ‘A foursome? Ridiculous.'

It's unusual in life for one person to be able to say of another, as I can of Mirka, that she knows everything there is to know about me. It's not a matter of consent, but instead that the possibility of concealment doesn't exist. Mirka looks at me and the alphabet of my life is open to her. It can sometimes happen that the one who knows you so completely is not your friend, but someone who intends to exploit you. But when it's your friend who knows you in this way, it's one of the best things that can happen to you in your life. To be read like a book – fabulous, I promise you.

  
22
  

HAZEL

G
et this right, Robert. Hazel is gone and I want her to be remembered the right way. Her marriage to Bob was a torment, but she loved him – even on the day of his marriage to Blanche. She threw a Liberation Party that day, at the same time, and many of the people at the wedding left after the ‘vows' (an ironical word to use when you're talking of Bob) to come to Hazel's party. Was there ever a woman who coped so graciously with anguish? On that day, on every day?

I'm at the studio in Gordon Street with Bob and maybe three or four boofheads from the ACTU, preparing for
Nationwide
, which you'll recall took the place of
TDT
for a while before
The 7.30 Report
started up. There's a petrol strike, and Bob is about to cover himself in glory by pulling a rabbit out of a hat, that sort of thing, if you can accept a rabbit as the solution to the whole ugly business. Hazel is here, mostly ignored, and she's still ignored after Bob's appearance on the show.

Bob and the boofheads are about to charge off to some other event, when Bob suddenly remembers Hazel. He calls to me as he's departing, ‘Look after her, can you?'

I take Hazel to the Green Room. She's on the verge of tears. I make her a drink: gin and tonic. It's been a bad day, and there have been, so it seems, other bad days over the past few months.

She says, ‘I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do.'

Bob is a womaniser of a certain sort – ‘G'day gorgeous, what's your name? Natalie, is it? I knew another Natalie. So what do you think, Nat, you and me, that suit you?' and away he goes. The Natalies are the Natalies, but now there's Blanche. She and Bob have been lovers for a few years, although it's said to be on hold for the time being.

Hazel may or may not know about Blanche, but if she does it's in the way that someone knows that something would kill them if they kept it steadily in their gaze, so they overt their eyes. All hope is gone, except for the morsel that keeps them alive. Hazel's trying to keep up with Bob, contribute something, and it's impossible. Contribute what? Love and support? For Bob? Because she does love him. Of course she does.

I love him myself. How could I not? He's one thing and he's another thing, certainly, but he's not a monster. And all grown-ups know that not all marriages last forever; the husband strays, the wife might sample here and there if the chance comes along: it's not a tragedy.

But if you can't cope with infidelity – few women can – it's going to tear your heart out, if you've got a heart, and Hazel has one of the best. What Hazel is enduring is something I've usually sailed through with a shrug and a few cheerful swear words. I think, ‘He's in bed with Madame X? When he could have Madame Wasowski? Is he mad?'

Hazel phones me a couple of days later and we meet up at her place in Sandringham. Sitting on the sofa, I offer Hazel the Werunia advice for all women in her situation: ‘Don't sit at home. Go out to the concert hall, the movies, galleries. And if you are at home, read a book, lots of books – they're better than any therapist.'

Hazel says, ‘Go out by myself? It looks pathetic. Bob would hate it.' I say, ‘With me. Concerts, galleries, movies, maybe lunch first, maybe dinner. Sure. With me.'

And that's what we do: concerts together, the movies, galleries.

It's the concerts that mean the most to her. Hazel is a fine pianist herself, has wonderful poise at the keyboard. I listen to her play, and recall that I was once bound for the Sorbonne. I don't know that I would ever have played as well as Hazel, though, even if I'd reached Paris. I don't know that I'd ever have developed her poise.

She plays for me, at Kirribilli, the Beethoven Sonata No. 32 in C Minor – quite difficult. She says, ‘More, Vera? Will I go on?' She plays Mozart and Debussy.

The sensibility that makes Hazel a fine pianist is the opposite of the sensibility that makes Bob a masterful politician. I recognise that. And I recognise, too, that Hazel's character is in many ways very different in its priorities than my own. When I came to see that Viktor and I were incompatible, I thought, ‘That's that.' Hazel, in her convictions, in her manner of engaging with life, in the quality of her affection, is incompatible with Bob, but she doesn't say, and never could say, ‘That's that. I won't sacrifice myself for this marriage.'

We walk on the beach at Sandringham, where Hazel and Bob have their house. I say, ‘See, this is better. The world.'

The gulls rise from the wet sand of the ebb tide as one, hang in the air for a minute or two, then float down and land on the orange sticks of their legs. Waves break on sandstone cliffs reaching out into the sea. Grey clouds sit on the horizon, only slightly brighter than the grey ocean.

Hazel puts a hand to her eyes to watch the sailing boats tilting in the misty light, tilting and straightening. She says, ‘I'm happy. The kids are okay. But I still worry. Do you worry about Marek?'

At this time, my son is up north with his wife, not so far from Byron Bay in fact, enjoying a life that celebrates the continuation of the individual human spirit through existence after existence, a New Age thing, not my cup of tea.

‘Sometimes,' I say. ‘Not much. Yes, sure.'

And so we grow close, as close as I am with Mirka, but it's different, of course. Hazel is slowly teaching herself to pour out the bounty of life from the Horn of Plenty; Mirka has gorged on that bounty for decades.

Hazel says one day, ‘Come with me to hear Rostropovich. It's the best thing, to hear Rostropovich. Will you come, lovely?'

I say, ‘Rostropovich? I'll come to Rostropovich.'

Hazel says, ‘You and me.'

‘You and me.'

‘I'd love that.'

Hazel has beautiful eyes. I tell her, and she says, ‘Really? Well.' Then she says, ‘Eyes that have seen a lot, my dear. Not as much as yours, but a lot.'

She doesn't complain about Bob. What would be the point? And I'm not the right person to complain to, even if she wished to.

I'm not judgemental. Who can be bothered? Once you start judging, where do you stop? I'm not even judgemental about myself, and that's a good thing. I know people who think of me, ‘She drinks, she smokes, and my God, all that dope! Also, she's in bed with him, and him, and him – what the devil?' And I think, ‘She sounds interesting, this Vera Wasowski.' Hazel doesn't judge me. If it's your habit to be judgemental, okay, you can have one sort of friend, but you can't have the best sort.

One afternoon in March of 1983, we come back to Sandringham after shopping, and the front yard is full of television crews and reporters.

Everybody talks at once. ‘Hazel, Hazel, Attractive Blonde from Ten News, do you have a comment on your husband's new job, Hazel?'

Hazel murmurs, ‘Dear God.'

At this time, Bob and Blanche have renewed their affair, and Hazel hears little of Bob's plans and progress: far less than Blanche. I had expected Bob to become opposition leader and then prime minister, but not before Bill Hayden maybe lost the coming election to Malcolm. I'm amazed.

I also need to get back to Gordon Street for what is bound to be a night of blood and entrails.

Hazel, preparing for the interviews, finds the perfect smile for the occasion, finds the grit for the ordeal awaiting her, makes the brief speech Bob expects her to make. Privately, I think, ‘She wants to scream.' Her marriage is held together (in a sense) by her loyalty to Bob's ambition, and now she has to spend the next so-many years smiling in public like a crazy person.

Bob becomes Master of The Lodge. Hazel becomes Mistress of The Lodge. Werunia becomes an occasional visitor to The Lodge and to Kirribilli for dinners, lunches and sometimes Easter holidays, Christmas celebrations, when the birth of a Jew who remained unemployed for most of his life is honoured with plum pudding and little hats of coloured tissue.

Bob's ambition in life is to dress in no garment other than his bathing trunks – very like underpants but without a fly. He has a good body (I ought to know, having had it displayed to me) and wishes to give as many people as possible the opportunity to gaze on it.

He's at Christmas dinner in his trunks and a paper tissue hat. In the stupor that is courted by Australians at the Christmas table – two servings of everything, Champagne, merlot, maybe a liqueur, beer in between – we are invited down to the swimming pool. Bob exhibits his freestyle. I sit with Hazel, watching my grandson, Pani, shrieking and splashing in the shallow end. (I have not mentioned Pani so far – I will have more to say.) The Lodge staff (they have a butler here, who knew this? – a man who wears, on occasions, a magnificent designer apron) serve drinks and canapés and juice for the children (a number of these children: Pani is mine by way of Marek; all of the others, who knows?).

Bob takes a call of national importance, still in the water, on a telephone that sits on a table at the side of the pool.

I can see Hazel in profile on her banana lounge, one hand dangling down to the poolside tiles, brushing their surface lightly with her fingertips. I'm aware, as much as anyone, of the strength of character that permits her to keep everything under control. I am aware of the currents beneath the surface that can wrench her about. I admire her, of course I do, and she admires me for dancing through life, for laughing at all the nonsense, for having the sublime ability to shrug at the right moment. But admiration doesn't explain our friendship. Some people, you look at them once and you know their heart; others, no matter how much intimacy, you never even get a glimpse of a heart. I know Hazel's heart. After that comes friendship, love, loyalty. She doesn't ever wish to hear me criticising Bob; she doesn't want to hear me saying complimentary things about her, fulsome things: that's not what she's after. She wants me to hold her in my gaze, accept her.

And I do.